Chi-Raq Goes For Broke Creatively And Succeeds More Often Than Not

Chi-Raq, a 2015 effort from writer/director Spike Lee, establishes its go-for-broke tendencies right off the bat by opening with what's basically an overture. A Nick Cannon song entitled Pray 4 My City plays in its entirety while lyrics for the song flash up on the screen against a black background. Once it's finished, we get a unique rendering of the map of America while audio of a pastor's preaching playing in the background. Only then does the story of Chi-Raq get underway. Kicking off with two separate prologues is a bold move and it's one that establishes right away that Chi-Raq is not going to be a movie aiming to be ordinary. Instead, Chi-Raq wants to be bold, unique, and, most importantly, say something about the modern world.

The Past Becomes The Present In Da 5 Bloods

Da 5 Bloods makes it no secret where its creative inspirations lie. Any movie about men heading off to unearth gold and developing distrust with one another is bound to draw comparisons to The Treasure of Sierra Madre. Writer/director Spike Lee has been open on that influences as well as how Da 5 Bloods takes inspiration from another Vietnam film, Apocalypse Now. Meanwhile, I myself found Da 5 Bloods frequently evoking William Friedkin's Sorcerer. Da 5 Bloods has an obvious rich love for the cinema of the past. However, this is not one of those movies that lean on homages alone. Instead, past films are used as a springboard for something new, something exciting, and something boldly-realized.

Tragedies of the Past Fascinatingly Impact the Present in 25th Hour

For a filmmaker as immersed in New York City as Spike Lee, there was no way the tragic events of 9/11 wouldn't impact his work in some profound way. So it was that his 2002 film 25th Hour, his first directorial effort in the wake of 9/11, has this event looming over the proceedings like a dark storm cloud. From the opening credits set over footage of that famous pair of beams of light meant to represent the now gone Twin Towers, the influence 9/11 will have on what's to come in 25th Hour is apparent. Though this isn't a story explicitly about 9/11, it is a tale about how one harrowing event changes numerous New Yorkers life and over the course of one evening, explores how these individuals have responded to that event.

Denzel Washington Delivers Some of His Best Work As An Actor In The Outstanding Biopic Malcolm X

In my prior reviews, I’ve made it no secret how much I prefer biopic movies that cover a short span of a real-life person’s life rather than features that try to shove an entire life into one motion picture. When you try to put too many major life events into one biopic movie, it has a tendency to make things feel rushed and lessens the impact of moments that should have real power to them. But this approach to biopic cinema can work with the proper execution and Spike Lee’s Malcolm X not only has the proper execution, it executes its expansive depiction of the life of Malcolm X so well that this truly feels like one of the all-time great biopics.

Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman Is A Triumphant Examination Of Past & Present Racism

Far too many American movies dealing with racism in America's past do so, usually with a Caucasian white savior protagonist in tow, with the purpose of reassuring white moviegoers that "Everything is fine now, look how much better things are now compared to the past!" Horrors of the past and the lives of the disenfranchised who had to endure the brunt of such horrors are reduced to being simply a way to reassure privileged members of present-day society that everything related to race in the modern world is cool, everything is fine. That's certainly not the case with Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, which is all about using a story about a black cop infiltrating a KKK charter to explore how racist horrors of the past still heavily influence a modern-day world where bigotry runs rampant.

Do The Right Thing And Watch Spike Lee's 1989 Masterpiece

One of the biggest takeaways I have about Do The Right Thing is that its entire climax (which hinges on an unarmed African-American man being killed by a police officer via a chokehold) feels chillingly relevant today. My other big takeaway is that Spike Lee's 1989 film Do The Right Thing is an extraordinary piece of cinema, a motion picture that fleshes out the array of inhabitants in one neighborhood and makes the location feel like an entire world. This wasn't the first Spike Lee directed movie to really take off (the guy had even hosted SNL prior to this), but it's so easy to see why Do The Right Thing took Lee to the next level of stardom.